London-based venture capital firm Atomico has dismissed one of its most senior partners, Hiro Tamura, following complaints from staff over his management style. The Midas List Europe investor headed up Atomico’s investment team and was an earlier backer of startups Stripe, MasterClass and Telegram.
Tamura was suspended Friday, February 18, following a complaint about his management style from Atomico staff members and was dismissed Tuesday, February 22, following an internal investigation. Atomico founder Niklas Zennstrom will take over the running of the investment team following Tamura’s departure.
“We can confirm that Hiro has left Atomico. Going forward, the investment team will be run by Atomico founder Niklas Zennström,” says a spokesperson for Atomico. Forbes approached Tamura for comment without reply before the time of publication.
Tamura had worked with Atomico since 2008 and was one of the earliest hires at Zennström’s fund, which has grown into being one of the largest venture capital investors in Europe. The former Atomico general partner had started working with Skype founder Zennström as a board advisor on the international growth of the online telephone service.
The former Lehman Brothers banker had run his own investment fund in his native Japan before starting to work with Atomico. At the London-based fund, he became a prolific backer of leading startups on both sides of the Atlantic. Tamura sat on the board of real estate startup Compass, storage unicorn Clutter and Amsterdam-based Twilio rival MessageBird but had also led Atomico’s investment in unicorn startups Sorare, Telegram and MasterClass.
